I agree with you but it is not realistic to expect that. And SKG has the same take I do.

It is not realistic to expect the business to stop what they are doing and create this huge cost undoing the damage they did when it is much easier to convince lawmakers to just enforce it going forward. Its harder for the businesses to argue against it because they cannot claim such an immense cost fixing their old catalog. Do I wish they would fix everything? Yes of course. But in this world that was never going to happen. SKG has the best option we have right now.

A game can be updated after a music license expires AND after the game is no longer being sold. The update should not be forced to include music removal if the update happens after the expiry date of the music license, but only if the game is no longer for sale.

In other words, the publisher can push an update to people who already bought the game with no mandatory music removal. They just cannot continue to sell the game after the music license expires if they do not renew the license. License renewal should be forced to be at the same rate as originally set, and these licenses should be regulated to ensure fairness. Because it is immensely common for a music license to suddenly increased on license renewal for no apparent reason other than greed.

Considering how literally evil record label companies are, second only to Disney, in consideration of ruining copyright law, I would even say music piracy is practically a moral obligation at this point. The artists and song writers know how beneficial music piracy is to gaining a larger paying audience, but record label companies cannot help themselves bending over thousands to pick up tenths.

AFAIK, no, you cannot get an indefinite music license for synchronization. Game licenses for music are stupidly overcomplicated, but basically the terms usually amount to either a time expiry in years, or a units sold expiry. I have never heard of or seen a music license that is for more than 1 million units or is longer than 10 years, unless the record label company directly made or funded the game themselves maybe. And as video games continue to be morbidly profitable, that number will only go down, forcing more renewals.

“Oh, your game is popular and our song is in it and about to expire? Well now it costs you double and only lasts for 1 year this time. What are you going to do? Remove your song and deal with the backlash? You cant pin it on us, because we dont care and the players will say its a cop out. See you next year when we triple the license cost.”

The older a game is, the more work it would take to retroactively fix them. Its not realistic to expect this especially when some publisher catalogs span more than a decade. Getting the old server code to work and then verifying that it isnt going to delete system files when uninstalling it or something by accident takes time and money away from new development.

Instead, if they plan End of Life into the product from the beginning, the time and cost of doing it is drastically reduces to basically nothing. A few weeks of forethought and planning to avoid potential years of development work fixing old bromen games is a trade I am willing to accept.

Again, I wish they would release old server files and let us figure out how to get them running, but I understand there are limitations that prevent that.

Its bad that the trademark and branded logos match again?

They can’t legally keep it in the game if the license expired but these clauses should be retroactively altered such that this clause only applies to games that continue to be sold. Units that have already been sold previously should not receieve updates to remove the music just because the license is expired. Instead, if the game is no longer being sold by the publisher/developer, even if they choose to make updates to the game available, music removal should not be mandatory. The set amount of units are already sold. Whether the game is updated or supported beyond the music expiry license should not be part of the license agreement, and should be only based on whether it continues to be sold or not.

Should change it to apply to any and all games published after the bill is passed.

Realistically, its a big ask for publishers to retroactively apply to their older games, but I do think they should still legally be required to do so for old games they don’t sell anymore. Its not realistic to ask that though, so it is understandable that it wouldn’t be included.

Just slapping the Silent Hill name on a game doesn’t make it a Silent Hill game. Or even having the same music composer.

Silent Hill f doesn’t take place in Silent Hill, and places greater focus on combat than entries in the series prior to Homecoming. Also, Silent Hill is not “trauma exploration: the game series.” That was Silent Hill 2, and potentially the original plans for Silent Hill 3 before Konami forced major story rewrites. Silent Hill 1 and 4 do not have those themes at all, and instead they focus on the town itself, its history and events that took place there. Both Harry Mason and Henry Townshend are completely innocent protagonists with no inherent or implied trauma that is explored in the games narratives. Every Silent Hill game since Homecoming came out has tried to copy Silent Hill 2 2001, including its own remake, and failed by placing too much focus on combat due to the camera system and a shift in how the combat works.

Silent Hill f, if it didn’t have the name, would be easily called anything else. It isn’t a game that without the name is still clearly Silent Hill. Even Homecoming at least had the town of Silent Hill as the setting. f has nothing to connect it to the series except for the potentially white claudia reference, and just surface level similarities. Lake Haven on Steam isn’t a Silent Hill game just because it has fog, fixed camera controls, and a trauma exploring narrative. Even if it was called Silent Hill: Lake Haven.

I think Silent Hill f is okay as a game on its own. But its not a Silent Hill game. Silent Hill f is like calling Kuon (the FromSoftware survival horror game) “Resident Evil: Heian Period Japan Edition.” Or like calling Call of Duty Infinite “Halo.” There may be similarities, but the name does not apply.

Silent Hill f isn’t a Silent Hill game.

Thanks to exploiters like Jim Halperin!

PS5 or Nintendo Switch.

PS5: No games I want to play except Demons Souls Remake. Its the only PS5 game I own. Every other game I wanted to play I just play on PC instead.

Switch: Weak, underpowered “console.” Never left the dock, ever. Still had performance problems in first party titles, like Breath of the Wild chugging to 15fps or less in the Korok Forest when facing East for some reason. After I was disappointed with Breath of the Wild, I haven’t touched the 2014 midrange tablet “console” since. Only emulated the games for an immensely better experience.

None of the things you complained about were the fault of the console though.

Also, should have bought any other revision of the console than a 1.6 if you wanted to modify it.

Wilhelm scream.

I am being completely honest when I say I would want Jack Black in a Pitfall movie based on the game. Jack Black was in the games commercials, so it would be a nice way to round that off.

Ever wonder why us automechanics seem to drive cars that are so junky looking (or, conversely, are absolutely immaculate)?

Actually, some art styles are immensely easier to render.

Especially for something like a LEGO game. LEGO has very highly repetitive texture work while also having a lot of the object be fairly small on the screen. These objects don’t need such high resolutions being loaded all the time and thus this style can more aggresively use LODs to keep VRAM usage from high resolution textures low. Due to the very angular nature of LEGO, the game can also more aggresively reduce polygon counts than other art styles, lowering VRAM usage from vertices and meshes. With a few variations, a texture of weathering can be applied and randomized effectively so that can reduce disk storage requirements.

Compared to other art styles, LEGO is almost as forgiving as cel shading when it comes to texture work, and almost as forgiving as Minecraft when it comes to model work. So if the game is built properly, their VRAM budget should be well high enough to render thousands and thousands of models, with RayTracing, or to handle the small scenes one would generally expect from this kind of game with ultra raytracing settings.

Of course, it doesn’t take an expert to imagine they are probably just using Nanite and Lumen, probably at their default settings, which are just horrifically bad for performance.

Yeah, except all the parts to build even a midrange PC have become unaffordable.

I am still on my GTX 1080 Ti (an EVGA FTW3 which I actually got on discount for $400 about a year after it launched) waiting for hardware I can actually afford that gives an upgrade worth spending the money for it. Nearly $1000 USD for even just a 70 series card isn’t worth it at all.

I wonder if this is ever going to happen intentionally with some kind of “phone home” system to slap people with lawsuits. Has that ever been done before? I know similar things have happened with antipiracy measure but those usually only effect the actual game. It seems like something big companies would want to do.

To be fair, at this time the game was still being designed on CRTs (LCDs existed but everything except footprint size was a downgrade - and they still are if you ask me), so the intended way to play the game from the artists perspective is still at 1x on a CRT, which effectively masks pixels edges with the CRTs inherent picture softening.

The big 5 in DRAM chips manufacturers literally got fined by the FTC for price fixing in 2002. They admitted to price fixing from 1998-2002.

Verdun Oil and XLC Resources just got fined in 2025 for purposefully shutting down EPs crude oil drilling plans prior to a merger notification to antitrust authorities (called gun-jumping) which caused a massive crude oil supply shortage whcih was intentional to keep prices high.

Medical companies got fined this year for price fixing on insulin.

The prices were always going to go up regardless of the economy or the current US president, because the prices aren’t effected by those nearly as much as they are effected by shareholder greed and demand for short term profit at the expense of everything else.

Why wouldn’t they? Once a few start increasing their prices, others will either have to (such as small businesses when their suppliers increase prices), or will follow suit out of immense greed (GPU manufacturers already made huge net profit, they didn’t need more). All it takes is for a few businesses at the bottom to start turning the valves and the whole system falls apart, regardless of economy.

This is why when prices go up during a bad economy, once the economy is good the prices never ever go back to the amount they were before. Ever. The prices go up and always stay up.